US Special Forces conducted multiple raids in Pakistan’

KARACHI: US Special Forces have conducted multiple clandestine raids as part of a secret war inside Pakistans tribal areas where Washington is pressing to expand its drone attacks, a report in Britain’s Guardian newspaper said. Citing a former Nato officer, the Guardian said these incursions, only one of which was previously reported, occurred between 2003 and 2008. It involved helicopter-borne elite soldiers entering through the border at night. The incursions were never declared to the Pakistani government, the report said. The source said Pakistan was kept in the dark about the operations and that the United States would not officially confirm the procedures. After the only publicly acknowledged special forces’ raid in September 2008, Pakistans foreign office condemned it as ‘a grave provocation’, while the Pakistani military thre atened retaliatory action.